What it will take to get back to work |
Can the U.S. really go back to work in three weeks? Looking at a market in turmoil and people losing their jobs by the thousands, that’s what President Trump said his goal was: “THE CURE CANNOT BE WORSE (by far) THAN THE PROBLEM!” Bloomberg spoke to health experts about what it would take to start lifting shutdowns on businesses and telling people that they can leave their homes, shop and go back to their lives as normal. Unsurprisingly, they told us, it’s not that simple. Right at the start, there’s one big risk: Send people back to work without the outbreak under control, and you make it worse. Cases surge, hospitals get overwhelmed, people die, and states and cities come down with even harsher measures. First, the U.S. needs to buy time. Cases are rising rapidly, and New York seems to be center of a major outbreak. Goal one is to stop that trend with several more weeks of aggressive social distancing to reduce transmission. After cases drop, younger and healthier people could be allowed more freedom of movement. Next comes testing, lots of it. The U.S. has failed badly here but a few weeks of aggressive case reduction could help it catch back up. Health workers need to find cases, even mild ones, isolate them, and break chains of transmission. That means potentially thousands of people hired to help trace patients’ contacts and test and isolate them. Identifying people who are infected, or likely to be, means those that aren’t can start going back to work. Lastly, the U.S. needs to know who’s immune already. Many cases are mild, and people who’ve already had the virus likely aren’t at risk of infection again. Blood tests called serotyping can trace antibodies that indicate whether a person was infected, even if they were asymptomatic, and if their immune system is ready to recognize and repel the virus. Those people can get back to work as well. None of this is easy. “We need to take the magnitude of this seriously if we are serious about saving the economy,” one expert told us. “There are no shortcuts.” All that’s at stake is millions of jobs, trillions of dollars in stocks, bonds and commodities, and thousands of lives.—Drew Armstrong |
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